


the world spins madly on

by goodmorningbeloved



Category: Marvel 1872 (Comics), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: (i swear this is a fix-it), 1872/MCU, Canonical Character Death, Fix-It, M/M, Memory Loss, Non-Linear Narrative, References to Depression & Suicidal Thoughts, References to Period-Typical Homophobia, Reincarnation, references to alcoholism, survivor's guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-03
Updated: 2017-10-03
Packaged: 2019-01-08 12:40:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12254586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goodmorningbeloved/pseuds/goodmorningbeloved
Summary: This isn’t about the beginning.This is about the bullet that slices through Steve Rogers’s heart, neat and clean, and leaves him for dead in the dust. This is about the gun that suddenly feels cold, colder, in Tony’s hand as he lunges to his feet and lurches forward, screaming and screaming._Or, Steve and Tony meet again in the afterlife.





	the world spins madly on

**Author's Note:**

> -this is unbeta'd, i honestly wrote most of this in some sort of fevered state and posting this is my form of stress release from the chaos of schoolwork rn (laughs then dies)
> 
> -title is from the weepies's "world spins madly on," which never fails to make me think of 1872 and cry.
> 
> -warning for discussions of the afterlife, with which i took liberal creative license. this is me playing around with multiverse and how reincarnation might factor in, and not at all an attempt to force anyone to believe anything. it's purely for plot!!
> 
> - **strong warnings** for heavy themes of survivor's guilt, depression, suicidal thoughts, and referenced alcohol abuse. this is primarily told through Tony's POV, and i do not agree at all with the self-deprecating language here, but as we know, Tony tends to be unkind to himself. please, please take care of yourself if/as you read.

This is the beginning: There is no beginning.

The bullet slices thr

 

 

“Hold on,” says Steve. “That doesn’t make any sense. There can’t be no beginning.”

“Yes there can,” Tony says. “That’s just what it felt like.”

“You didn’t have to say _there is no beginning_. The bullet is a beginning.”

“No, it wasn’t,” he mumbles.

“Hm?”

“Nothing.” He gives a sigh—or the impression of a sigh. The rest of him, faint and incorporeal, seems to ripple against the vast expanse of white they’re standing in. “Do you want to hear the story or not?”

“Yes. I do. Sorry.” Steve’s expressions softens into one of vague sheepishness. “Go on.”

 

 

This is th

 

 

“But say there’s a beginning,” Steve insists. He still has that sheepish look about him, like he knows he’s interrupting again but he can’t help it. “It— It doesn’t sound right otherwise, don’t you think? There’s always a beginning.”

Tony, who has never been able to say no to him, relents.

 

 

This is not the beginning. There _is_ a beginning, but it’s years and years ago, when a certain man first arrives in town with the sun on his back and a glimmer of gold on his front.

This isn’t about the beginning.

This is about the bullet that slices through Steve Rogers’s heart, neat and clean, and leaves him for dead in the dust. This is about the gun that suddenly feels cold, colder, in Tony’s hand as he lunges to his feet and lurches forward, screaming and screaming.

He fires, even though he said he’d die before he ever fired a gun again, and promises himself he’ll have time to throw up later. Right now there’s Steve, Steve on the ground, Steve opening his mouth weakly in an aborted gasp for air, Steve dying, and th

 

 

“You gave him a name,” Steve says, soft. His voice seems to ripple in the non-existent wind.

Tony frowns, shifting away when Steve makes a move towards him. “And?”

The question gives Steve pause. “Nothing,” he answers eventually, “I guess I just… You haven’t even told me yours.”

“You’ll remember soon,” Tony says off-handedly. “Can I continue?”

 

 

and there’s nothing Tony can do. The bullet, the first he’s fired in ten years, has missed and now the murderer is laughing at him like he knows exactly how helpless he feels. Hands close around his shoulders, his wrists, gently pulling him away _before you get yourself killed too, Tony, come on._

“Let me go,” he shouts at them.

Someone eases the gun out of his hand, and he finds that he’s too weak to really fight anyway. His body is still half-heavy with alcohol and laden with grief, and he’s babbling, trying to say _please let me go let me get to him someone help himsomeonehelphimpleaseohgodSOMEONEHELPHIM—_

“Ladies, please help me move him inside.”

“We let him die in the street,” he throws at them. “We let him die. We’re damned. We let him die, oh, God, we let him die. I let him die.”

“Tony,” this is Natasha who puts her hands around his face and urges him to look at her, “stop. You have to stop.”

“I killed him.”

She says he didn’t, but what does she know?

He’s guided into someone’s house, but they don’t shut the door fast enough, and he looks back in time to see that hulking brute of a man pick up Steve and throw him to

 

 

thr

 

 

picks him up and just _throws_ him t

 

 

“Hey.” Steve reaches out for him and Tony doesn’t see the movement until it’s too late. Steve’s hand sinks right through his shoulder.

Tony laughs, a dry and brittle sound. He’s trembling, frighteningly close to crying. Even after all this time, why does it still feel so _raw_ in his mind?

Steve’s frowning like he’s forgotten neither of them are really there. Still, that doesn’t stop him from leaning in anyway, trying to meet Tony’s eyes. “You don’t have to tell it,” he offers quietly.

Tony shakes his head, stepping away from him. The closeness would be too familiar and then he’ll get his hopes up and they’ll crash and burn again.

“I have to,” he says. He has to.

 

 

The man picks up Steve and throws him to the pigs like he’s nothing and then the pigs probably devour him like he’s nothing too Tony’s not sure he doesn’t see that part Natasha has a hand on his shoulder again and pushing him further into the house where it’s dark and safe and he doesn’t have to watch anymore.

And then

 

 

“Breathe,” Steve says.

“ _Breathe?_ ” Tony repeats, a little shrilly. He _should_ , his hands are shaking and he’s struggling to rein in his voice. “Have you _seen_ us?”

Steve’s got that fire in his eyes but he actually takes the question to heart, snapping his mouth shut and looking down at themselves like he has sincerely forgotten where they are (nowhere) and what they are (nothing). Tony watches him open and close his mouth several times, obviously trying to find something to say in return, and when Steve looks back up and finally recollects his wits, he says, “You have a point.”

Tony blinks.

He laughs.

And Steve, eventually, bubbles into laughter with him.

It feels good, and it feels better with Steve next to him. _This is what we should have been doing_ , he thinks. _All those years, this is what we should have been doing._

Steve is the first to calm down. Eyes bright, laughter lines still visible in this form, mouth smiling all easy—Tony could be convinced to think he’s still alive, even with the hole in his chest.

Steve is looking at him with an expression that eventually calms him too. For a few moments, Steve simply looks at him and Tony looks back, smiling a little stupidly.

He looks away first, wondering if it’s possible to fluster with no blood in his body.

“Do you want to keep going?” Steve asks.

Does he?

“This part’s a little easier to tell,” he says instead.

 

 

He knows what he has to do. The alcohol makes it a little hard to see clearly past a few feet, but he can see his plan with a vivid clarity.

The suit takes little more than a night to build. He’s had its plans for years, back when he thought the North would need more than guns to spook the South to the negotiation table. This is a sloppy construction, nothing he would have ever authorized for distribution, but time is short.

Or so he’d like to say, anyway. In truth, he’s digging his grave, and when he suits up for the first time, he feels so at peace with himself that he doesn’t care there’s no satin lining in this coffin like he’s always imagined.

If this is a world that would willfully smother a fire like Steve, good and brave and honorable Steve, why the hell should Tony stay in it any longer?

 

 

“Did you…?” Steve’s voice is gentle. The rest of the question is in his eyes.

“Who said anything about me?” Tony mutters, not convincingly enough.

“Tony,” Steve says, and Tony’s traitorous heart clamors in his ribcage. Even when he’s unalive he’s still so pathetically in love. “That’s your name?”

“Yeah,” he says, averting his eyes but hoping Steve will say it again.

“Tony,” Steve says, “nice to meet you.”

He doesn’t want to do that. Tony closes his eyes. “I died,” he says. “That night, I helped Red Wolf avenge Steve. And then I went north, went to the dam where Bruce and Natasha were trying to rig explosives and I sent them back to town, and then I set off the explosives myself. That’s how I died.” He opens his eyes and meets Steve’s gaze levelly.

Steve winces like he’s trying to imagine how that felt. “You _remember_? How you died?”

“So will you. Eventually.”

“Did it hurt?”

In any other circumstance, he would have scoffed and called the question ridiculous. But Tony thinks of the gun that fired the bullet that went through Steve’s heart, and he decides to answer honestly, “Like hell.”

He expects Steve to be afraid of it, because everyone’s afraid of death, aren’t they?, but Steve instead takes on this look of quiet determination. Tony remembers being on the receiving end of the look countless times—hazy memories that start with a bottle and end with him stumbling out of the cot in Steve’s office with the words _take care of yourself, Tony_ calling out behind him. “I’m sorry,” Steve says.

Tony makes a small, disbelieving sound, because trust Steve to apologize for something so out of his control. “What the hell for?”

“That you had to feel it.”

“It’s,” Tony begins, faltering. _It’s nothing you could have changed_ , he could say, or _you were already gone_ or _I wanted it._

Steve only nods, like he knows all these things that Tony is thinking somehow, or maybe something close to muscle memory has survived the oblivion that wiped his memory after death and he remembers that words have never been Tony’s strongest suit. “You loved him.”

Tony looks up sharply.

“Your…” Steve grasps for the right word, then settles for a name: “Steve.”

_His Steve._ Trite. Tony, cowardly and guilty and never-could-be-good-enough Tony, never had Steve, never deserved him.

“I do,” is his confession despite all of it. “So much.”

It doesn’t matter now. The man in the cape had told him _things will move forward once Mister Rogers joins us_ , and Tony had taken that to mean they will finally move on from this state of limbo. (That’s the word Tony would use to describe it anyway: A sea of white that goes on and on, no end or beginning or up or down, no way in — he only remembers opening his eyes and simply _being_ here — and no way out.) Now that Steve’s here, maybe they’ll leave before he even remembers.

“Oh.”

“Yeah. _Oh._ ” Tony shakes his head, then glances around and wonders when that man will return.

Steve is fidgeting, his fingers passing over and under and through each other as he reflexively tries and fails to wring them. “Are you sure we didn’t know each other?”

“I didn’t say we didn’t,” he replies carefully, keeping his expression impassive. “I said you’d remember soon.”

“Is there a reason you won’t tell me?” Steve asks, looking him straight in the eye.

Tony looks back. “I want you to remember it yourself.”

Steve tilts his head near-imperceptibly. “You’re lying.” And before Tony has a chance to defend himself, Steve goes on, “I think you did love him. And that’s why you couldn’t look at me when you said you did. But you weren’t afraid to look at me just now.”

So what? That doesn’t prove anything, Tony tells himself.

“I want to know, Tony. I _need_ to know.” 

Tony understands, he _does_. It was awful when he woke up here with no one to talk to or ask what the hell was going on—he had wandered and wandered until he nearly drove himself crazy, feeling inexplicably claustrophobic in a space that was so impossibly open. And when the stranger had appeared to him from a simple rift, calling himself _Strange_ or something similar that Tony hadn’t completely believed, he hadn’t offered much explanation either, just a simple declaration that they ought to wait for Steve.

_Why?_ Tony had asked, his gut twisting at the thought of seeing Steve again after so, so long.

_It's just the way it has to be._

_What do you mean?_

But the man had disappeared then and Tony had been alone again. It was difficult to tell time here; it felt like an eternity had passed until he simply turned and there was Steve, suddenly, blinking into existence and looking no different than that last time Tony saw him. His memories had returned puzzles pieces falling soundly into place, and when Steve took one look at him and asked who he was, Tony, in a single act of selfishness, decided he would not be the one to tell Steve how they let him die.

So he tells Steve, “I know you do,” and he means it. But he also means it when he says, “I can’t tell you. I just _can’t,_ I- I’m sorry.”

He almost says Steve’s name there. It’s on the tip of his tongue, a syllable that still feels so natural after all those years.

Steve’s expression flickers—first confused, then angry, then quietly defeated. Tony thinks he sees his shoulders slump as he turns. “All right. I understand.”

Seconds or minutes or hours later, a part of him begins to regret it. Steve sits facing away from him, quiet, his image sometimes flickering in a way that makes Tony’s heart jump up to his throat in fear. It’s more unbearable than the initial silence.

It eats at him. Makes him wish he was tangible so he could rub at his arms, hands, any part of him that might give the sensation of him casting off this— this—

He used to wonder what comes after death. Life had taken that curiosity and dulled it down, made it cynical and uncaring and ask instead, _whatever it is, when will it finally happen?_ Steve’s headstone had asked him, _when it does come, will you be ready to answer for everything your hands have wrought?_

And if this is it, if this is what-comes-after-death, if this is his penance? If this is the last time he might see Steve again?

By the time Steve turns to him again, Tony beats him to the first word, bubbling with guilt and guilt and _guilt_ :

 

 

There’s no beginning because he doesn’t remember the first time they met. That night was particularly bad, Pepper’s soft words and gentle hands, first on his cheek then around the handle of her suitcase. _You will heal, Tony_ , she said, _I know it doesn’t feel like it. But you will, in time._

He had drunk himself to a blackout, and when he woke up he was in the corner of the sheriff’s office that he didn’t realize was still in use, and there was a man sitting at the desk nearby with a face that looked too gentle for the gun holstered on his hip.

_They did warn me that you can’t look after yourself_ , had been Steve’s first words to him, and in the days that followed, it became clear that Steve had attached some unspoken addendum, _so I’ll look after you._

There’s no end, either. There is _one_ end, but not for them, and it is one of Tony’s greatest regrets. Steve dies and so does what’s left of Tony’s heart and everything they were or could have been. Steve dies and Tony not-lives through the rest of h

 

 

“Tony,” Steve says, soft and pleading and trying in vain to touch him, “please, slow down and listen to—”

“I lied,” Tony’s voice shakes when he says it, “about— about my death. This is important to me, you have to know, I— I lied, I didn’t die, I lived

 

 

through that day, and then the day after that, and the day after that. He lives while Steve is dead, and every day he makes the walk to the quiet spot they’ve picked for Steve’s grave and weeps at the reminder.

But he _lives._ He returns to the workshop. He creates. He helps make sure the town stays safe. He cleans off _The Vision_ and makes it say all sorts of things, smiles when children laugh in delight when they read their fortunes. He spends nights in other people’s company instead of a bottle.

He lives because in the end he is a coward, afraid to die like everyone else after all. He lives because, selfishly, he wants to.

He lives for years and years, years that he doesn’t deserve, years he would have given to Steve in a heartbeat. And when he finally dies, it is in his house with Pepper at his side, the lines of her eyes weathered by time but no less kind as she tells him _it’s okay, Tony._

He dies with a peace that he doesn’t

 

 

“You _do_.” Steve’s interjection is loud, harsh. “You did, you _do_ deserve it, Stark, you haven’t changed at all, _goddamn you._ ”

And it’s the sound of his name and Steve’s furious eyes that makes him think, _He remembers._

Oh, God, Steve _remembers_.

“Steve,” he says, and the rest of it comes spilling out in one long breath, “Steve, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I should have done more, _I’m so sorry_ —”

“You didn’t kill me. Goddamn it, Tony, you said that, why would you say that? _You didn’t kill me_.”

“It was my gun, Steve!” he shouts, because why doesn’t Steve _understand_ this? “The bullet that killed you, I made it, I might as well have fucking shot you myself!”

“But you didn’t! ”

Tony swipes at his face in vain. He’s crying and he can somehow feel the cold, slick slide of tears, but his hands float uselessly through himself. Steve is there too, making a noise of frustration when he tries to cup Tony’s cheeks and finds that he can’t.

“Tony. Tony, sweetheart, look at me, _please_.”

Steve’s never called him that before. His voice softens when he says it, an earnest plea, and Tony quashes the desire to listen. He’s been selfish enough.

It is at this moment that Strange flits into existence, stepping in from a barely perceptible rift in the plane. The man takes one look at them and says, “Am I interrupting something?”

“Yes,” Steve snarls without missing a beat.

“Steve, stop,” he says weakly. “He’s the one who’s taking us away.”

Steve turns back to him, features twisting into a mixture of disbelief and anger. “Like hell I’m going anywhere before I convince your stubborn—”

“Actually,” Strange says mildly, “I’m only taking Steve for now.”

Like that, Tony suddenly feels cold. “What?”

“You have been due to start over for a while now, but it took me longer to find both of you than I expected. He,” Strange casts a long glance towards Steve, “happens to be born first in this particular universe, is all. I wouldn’t worry. Time tends to pass very fluidly here, and you'll be on your way too in no time.”

“ _Born first?_ ” Tony repeats. His head is spinning. “What, are we— We’re going to live through that again?”

“Not necessarily. No, something different.” Strange glances back at the rift still swirling in mid-air. Tony cranes his neck in vain, tries to make out anything past the swirling colors of charcoal and slate. He thinks he hears something — like rain falling or the hooves of a horse, the creaking of a wheel.

“I’m not going anywhere with you,” Steve says, jaw set defiantly. But he places himself between the man and Tony, paradoxically making himself more vulnerable.

Strange studies them for several seconds, then sighs. “Five minutes. Sort out whatever you need to. Then we _go_. This has all been delayed enough already.”

Five minutes? That’s not nearly enough time, Tony wants to shout, but Steve is evidently prepared. He turns to Tony and says, “You weren’t lying. When you said you loved— _love_ me. You were telling the truth.”

His eyes aren’t quite the same like this, not the vibrant shade of blue that Tony remembers, but the rest of him makes up for it: How he looks at Tony like Tony means _something_ to him, the way he skims his hand over Tony’s like he’s aching just as badly to touch.

“Yes,” Tony breathes. He can lie about many things, but not that. Not anymore.

“I loved you too. I _do_ love you.” 

_What?_ He's contemplated the  _idea_ of Steve saying it so many times but it's never once crossed his mind to imagine how it might actually sound in Steve's  _voice,_ and his mind is reeling.

“And it makes me happy, Tony, it makes me _so_ happy that you lived.”

“I shouldn’t have,” Tony says weakly while the rest of him struggles to comprehend the first part of Steve’s declaration. “It was you who should have lived, I didn’t—”

“Say _I didn’t deserve it_ one more time, and I’ll find a way to clap you over the head even while like this, Stark,” Steve warns, but his anger is ebbing, replaced by something fonder.

It’s not true. It can’t be true. Steve can’t love him back. 

“We’re ghosts,” Tony says thickly, “you can’t punch ghosts, Rogers, didn’t you read that in those novellas of yours?”

“Never got much reading done,” Steve counters. “Someone was always distracting me with their singing.”

“Boys,” Strange says warningly.

“You don’t believe me,” Steve says, ignoring him. “I— I get it. But... _Ah_. Tony. If I’d known, I would’ve said something sooner. Finally kissed you, and maybe then you would’ve put down the bottle.”

Tony finds himself fumbling for words when the _magnitude_ of possibility dawns on him, how much _more_ they could have been— “Why didn’t you?”

“Same reason you never told me, I reckon.” Steve smiles then, a little sad. “And it would’ve gotten one or the both of us lynched if people found out.”

“I wouldn’t have cared,” Tony blurts. “Would’ve told them all to go to hell and we’ll see them there.”

“Yeah.” Steve chuckles. “I used to imagine you’d say that.”

His heart, if it’s still there, is pounding.

Steve loves him. Steve loves him.

“If we’re starting all over,” Steve glances back briefly, “maybe we can try again. Be better at this.”

Tony wants to say, _I don’t want to start over. I want now, with you._ But he also remembers where they are, the utter emptiness of it all, and that little selfish part of him decides he wants more. He has Steve now and he wants more. A future. An ending.

“Well, apparently we won’t be meeting again for a while,” he mutters. It’s not fair. He entertains the idea of pitching himself through the rift when Strange walks out with Steve, but Steve seems to know what he’s thinking already.

“Hey, none of that,” he chides, making to tap the side of Tony’s head, a faint smirk tugging at his lips. “We’ll see each other soon, and then— _this_ ,” he gestures down at themselves, “will be over, and I can touch you again.”

“And I’ll be able to finally kiss that damn look off your face,” Tony threatens.

“Yes, and that.” Steve laughs, already sounding so much more human. “Soon, all right?”

It sounds an awful lot like a promise.

“All right,” Tony murmurs.

Steve leans his forehead towards Tony, and Tony would like to think he feels it in that single, perfect moment.

“Shall we, Captain?” Strange asks as Steve finally pulls away and steps up to the rift.

Tony raises an eyebrow at the title. He thinks Steve’s about to ask, but Steve instead turns to Strange and says, “You better bring him back to me, or you will _wish_ I stayed intangible.”

Strange _laughs_. “Duly noted.”

The rift closes with a promise from Strange that he will be back soon. Their departure signals a wave of acceptance within him, a newfound patience for this new world of possibilities, so when he nods and thinks of Steve and agrees, "Soon," he does so with the beginnings of a smile.

 

 

 

 

 

and I kissed you then we took the horse and jumped into the portal,” Tony says, mimicking a horse’s gallop with his hand over Steve’s bare stomach.

“I feel like this would make more sense if you started from the beginning instead of waking me up in the middle of the night to tell me about how we rode into New York together, shirtless, flipped everyone off, and then rode into a swirling portal,” Steve says, surprisingly coherent for three in the morning. Tony considers asking JARVIS to ease on the lights a little, but he kind of likes the darkness too, likes how intimate it feels.

“It didn’t _have_ a beginning. Dreams are like that,” he argues. “Plus, I was going to forget if I didn’t start talking about it right away. It was great, it was just like _whoosh_ , then we were gone, and everyone was probably wondering what the hell they just saw.”

“Well, I’d wonder too if I was standing in New York and two cowboys suddenly materialized from thin air,” Steve muses, catching Tony’s wrist playfully when he gets to close to the sensitive spot on his side. “On… What was it, you said? A Shetland pony?”

“Yes,” Tony affirms enthusiastically. “And its name was Bucky, don’t forget.”

“Buck won’t be happy to hear about that, I don’t think.”

“Dream-you named it Bucky, not me!” he defends. “Besides, unless you’re planning to involve Bucky in these kinds of pillow talks, he doesn’t have to know.”

“Nope,” Steve decides, scooping Tony into his arms. Their bed creaks softly as Tony ends up sprawled on top of him, a little ginger from the bruises he’d earned from their latest mission but completely willing to bear it for the warmth of Steve’s arms. “Not sharing.”

“I’m glad we agree,” Tony says, pleased, and kisses Steve for it.

“You have weird dreams,” Steve informs him against his lips. “I’m usually telling you to sleep more, but maybe you slept a little too much this time.”

“Oh, that’s _precious_ , old man. How long were you asleep for, again? Seventy centuries?”

“Ow,” Steve gasps with an exaggerated pout, and Tony kisses that away too. "That's a low blow, sweetheart."

“I know, I know.” He grins. “I _guess_  it's all right, since you woke up in time to meet me, huh?”

Steve smiles at him through the dark, impossibly loving, impossibly real. “I did.”


End file.
